First Thing: Rafah crossing open to people for limited evacuation from Gaza

Border crossing open for first time in weeks to allow evacuation of injured Palestinian people and foreign passport-holders. Plus, one man’s search for the world’s greatest sandwich

Good morning.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has opened for the first time in more than three weeks of brutal conflict to allow the evacuation of dozens of injured Palestinian people requiring hospital treatment and hundreds of foreign passport holders.

Live footage from television crews at the Gaza side of the border showed scores of people and cars moving through the gates via the damaged terminal area, some carrying their belongings.

The opening of the crossing was negotiated between Egypt, Israel and Hamas, in coordination with the US, after the intervention of Qatar, which mediated in the talks.

However, there was no indication of how long it would remain open. The move follows international pressure to open Rafah on humanitarian grounds.

What are Israel’s aims in launching Gaza ground invasion? Verifiable information is hard to come by but the limited evidence emerging from the combat zone suggests the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are seeking to encircle Gaza City, probably as a prelude to trying to capture what was the capital of the strip. Ben Barry, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Israel’s military had been set contradictory political goals by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

What has Netanyahu said about the death of Israeli soldiers during the IDF campaign against Hamas in Gaza? The prime minister has issued a statement. “Our soldiers have fallen in the most just of wars, the war for our home,” he said.

Trump’s son Donald Jr to testify at real estate fraud trial in New York

Donald Trump’s eldest son will take the stand today at the New York civil fraud trial centred on the former president’s business empire. Donald Trump Jr, a defendant in the case alongside his father, is to testify as the judge considers whether the Trump Organization and its top executives lied about the value of its properties.

Don Jr and his brother Eric, who are executive vice-presidents at the company, are due to be questioned in court this week. The former president is expected to testify next week, before his daughter, Ivanka, who is not a defendant in the case, appears.

In an interview with Newsmax on Monday, Don Jr said the “mainstream media, the people in [Washington] DC … want to throw Trump in jail for a thousand years and/or the death penalty. Truly sick stuff but this is why we fight.”

Judge Arthur Engoron previously ruled that Trump and his family business committed fraud. Engoron is using this trial – focused on remaining claims of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records – to decide on punishment.

Biden expected to meet with Xi Jinping next month for ‘constructive’ talks

Joe Biden is expected to hold “constructive” talks with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of a summit in San Francisco this month, according to the White House.

The comments came days after China’s foreign minister made a rare visit to Washington to pave the way for Xi to meet Biden at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. China has not yet confirmed that Xi will come.

“We’re aiming to have a constructive conversation meeting between the leaders in San Francisco in November,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said of the long-awaited talks. “That’s what’s going to happen … We’re having a constructive conversation in San Francisco. I think I just confirmed it.”

When was the last time the pair spoke? Biden and Xi have had no contact since a meeting in Bali in November 2022. Relations have been tense for years between the world’s top two economies as they vie for influence in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, and as Beijing boosts cooperation with Russia in an attempt to reduce US dominance.

In other news …

Short-term threats posed by artificial intelligence to democracy and privacy must be addressed as urgently as longer-term existential ones, Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, is expected to say in a speech setting out the Biden administration’s vision before the UK’s Bletchley Park summit on AI.

WeWork plans to file for bankruptcy as early as next week, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday, as the SoftBank Group-backed company struggles with a massive debt pile and hefty losses. Shares of the flexible workspace provider fell 32% in extended trading after the Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

Robert De Niro shouted “Shame on you!” at his former executive assistant and vice-president yesterday as he testified in a New York courtroom, denying claims he was abusive towards his employee, who is seeking millions of dollars in damages.

A study suggests cigarette-style climate warnings could help people make wiser choices about not just their health but also the health of the planet. The research, by academics at Durham University in the UK, found warnings of environmental or health impacts reduced the choice of meals containing meat by 7-10%.

US senators from both parties indicated support for funding for Ukraine, voicing doubts yesterday about a House Republican plan to split Biden’s request for a $106bn aid package. Meanwhile the Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has warned against expecting too much success too quickly.

Stat of the day: US home-sellers win $1.78bn over inflated buyers’ commissions

A US jury has found the National Association of Realtors and some residential brokerages, including units of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, liable to pay $1.78bn in damages for conspiring to artificially inflate commissions for home sales. The verdict, by a federal jury in Kansas City, Missouri, could upend decades-old practices that have allowed real estate agents to boost commissions as home prices and mortgage rates rise, hurting consumers by making housing transactions more expensive.

Plaintiffs in the class action included sellers of more than 260,000 homes in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois between 2015 and 2022, who objected to the commissions they were obligated to pay buyers’ brokers.

Don’t miss this: She was censored over trans rights. But lawmaker Zooey Zephyr will not be silenced

Zooey Zephyr has become a symbol of graceful defiance in a state recently flooded with hate-riddled speech and politics. But how did she – a gamer, an elite wrestler as a child and later a dance instructor – become one of Time magazine’s “100 Next” leaders the publication anointed as people who could change the world?

Her rise to international fame began in 2022, when Zephyr became the first openly transgender woman elected to the Montana legislature, after a grassroots campaign prompted by the Republican majority’s attacks on trans rights and the independent judiciary system. Now she is traveling across the state to recruit dissenting voices.

Climate check: Baltic Sea faces ‘critical challenges’ on climate and biodiversity, report says

The Baltic Sea faces “critical challenges” because of the climate crisis and degradation of biodiversity, a report has said, as Sweden’s coastguard battles to contain the impact of an oil spill off the country’s southern shore. In the most comprehensive audit of its kind to date, experts at the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission said on Tuesday there had been “little to no improvement” in the health of the body of water between 2016 and 2021. Fish stocks were at dangerously low levels, while pollution, land use and resource extraction continued to put pressure on the sea, the report said.

Last Thing: From compressed yeast to cream cheese and cornflakes – one man’s search for the world’s greatest sandwich

Since December 2018, Barry Enderwick – a one-man historical re-enaction society, armed with mayonnaise and old cookery books – has recreated recipes for his social media accounts, Sandwiches of History. What began as occasional posts on Instagram, and then TikTok, has now turned into a daily lunchtime creation for hundreds of thousands of followers. Its success has come as something of a surprise.

He has produced more than 700 sandwich recipes from history, dating from 200BC to the present day. What has he learned – and, crucially, which are the tastiest?

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